Saturday, May 20, 2017

Message For @realDonaldTrump: It's Still The Economy, Stupid

Priorities: President Trump finds himself embroiled in a number of controversies at the moment. Blame whomever you want for the scandal-of-the-day, someone needs to tell Trump that the only thing he should be talking and tweeting about is getting the economy back on track.

Yes, there have a been some good economic reports recently. Industrial output rose sharply in April, the Federal Reserve said on Tuesday. The 1% monthly gain was the biggest jump in more than three years. And unemployment dropped last month to the lowest it's been since 2007. Surveys of businesses show them to be optimistic.

But GDP growth in the first quarter was a mere 0.7%. And as we noted when the April jobs data came out, "the labor force participation rate actually fell to 62.9% as 162,000 people left the workforce, and we're still at the lowest level since 1979. Since the supply of labor is about 100,000 a month, that means more people are leaving the workforce than entering." We noted that there are still millions of people on the sidelines who would return to work if jobs were available.

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...Polls also show that public approval of Trump's handling of the economy has sagged since he took office. One aggregation of various polls shows that the public is now evenly split on the issue, where Trump had enjoyed an 11-point favorable margin. ...